


all the fear and the fire at the end of the world

by elsinorerose



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Panic Attacks, Romance, caleb isn’t okay and he really needs someone to notice you guys, episode coda, kind of, spoilers for c2e127, spoilers for c2e128
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-05
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-18 11:34:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29857467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elsinorerose/pseuds/elsinorerose
Summary: In a rare moment of quiet, Jester comforts Caleb. (Major spoilers for campaign 2 episodes 127-128.)
Relationships: Jester Lavorre/Caleb Widogast
Comments: 13
Kudos: 115





	all the fear and the fire at the end of the world

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry, can’t wait a week for Caleb to deal with his shock and panic, had to fix it (or start fixing it) now. Whoops!
> 
> Title from “Wasteland, Baby” by Hozier.

Jester finds him away from the others, sitting crosslegged on the ground, hugging his arms and staring into the distance. His face is blank, as empty as their surroundings.

She clears her throat before she sits down next to him. 

“Brought you a drink,” she says after a pause, and she hands him the cup. 

He takes it automatically. Murmurs thanks. Clutches it in both hands and stares ahead once more without drinking. 

Jester finds herself mirroring him as she holds her own teacup. “We didn’t really dress for the trip, did we,” she halfheartedly jokes. “Should’ve updated our wardrobe, huh.”

She earns a short exhale from Caleb that might be an attempt at a laugh. 

Then silence. 

Very quietly, even quieter than she would have to be to make sure no one else heard, she murmurs, “Today was really hard.”

“Ja,” Caleb manages to whisper. 

“And really _long._ I mean, this morning we were having breakfast by the hot tub in the tower, and then...everything kinda went to shit, didn’t it.” 

Caleb has no answer. 

“We could’ve planned better.” She thinks of crumpled armor, of blood. “We _should_ have planned better. That’s on all of us.”

When Caleb finally speaks, his voice is hoarse. “I am sorry for frightening you.”

Jester turns and stares at him. It feels like a crack has just burst open across her heart. “I wasn’t scared of you, Caleb,” she whispers. 

“You were crying.” There are tears in his own voice. 

She swallows hard and clutches her teacup with both hands to keep them from trembling. “I wasn’t scared _of_ you. I was scared _for_ you. In that place, with—with those people. You went away a little bit behind your eyes for a few minutes and I wasn’t...I didn’t know how to bring you back.”

His next words she can barely hear. “I don’t know if I can ever come back, Jester.”

The crack lengthens. Splinters. 

She gets on her knees to face him, setting her drink aside. “You only say that because you don’t know how much you’re loved,” she tells him softly. “If you knew—if you really understood—you’d know there’s nothing that could stop us from saving you. Just like you saved us, just now.”

“Saved you?” A quiet, bitter laugh falls from his lips. “Look where I have brought you. You and your mother and—and Veth’s family. And for what, a few hours’ respite? A day—if we are lucky? And when we get back—”

“You don’t have to worry about that right now. Hey.” Jester takes Caleb’s face in her hands, makes him look at her. His stubble is rough beneath her palms, his eyes red-rimmed and exhausted. “You don’t have to worry about that right now,” she repeats. “You bought us time. All life is borrowed time, Caleb. And while there’s life, there’s hope.”

“Hope,” Caleb echoes. A faint smile is curving his lips. It’s a sad smile, but at least it’s not the horrible blank expression he was wearing a few minutes ago. “You know, I think I used to know what that word meant.”

“You haven’t forgotten, Caleb,” she insists, placing a hand flat over his heart even as she feels the crack in her own split and widen even further. “It’s in here. We’ll help you remember.”

He reaches up and touches her other hand, the one still cupping his cheek, and swallows hard. “Um. I am going to have a panic attack soon. Or—I am already having one, maybe, I don’t—I can’t tell.”

“Oh, that’s—that’s okay, we can just—” She lets go of him, suddenly afraid that her touch will push him further in the wrong direction. “Um. What do you need?” She thinks back to Mama’s bad days, to shaking and gasping and wide eyes, to pale skin and clutching hands. “We can breathe together, or I can keep talking and you can just listen...I could rub your back…? Um…” 

She’s biting her lower lip and trying to think of other ideas when Caleb stammers, “Ja, keep—keep—keep touching me, I need to know I am—here.”

Without even thinking, the first words she blurts out are: “Do you want a massage?”

A beat—and then he nods. 

Jester sits on her knees behind him, resting on her heels, and carefully reaches for his shoulders. His muscles are as tense as steel cords. She winces, but tries to keep her voice light as she starts working out the knots through his layers of clothing. “Everything’s gonna be okay, Caleb. You were alone last time. You’re not alone now.” Her thumbs rub firm, soothing circles into the base of his neck. “You’ve got—”

“Astrid is dead.”

Jester goes still, her very blood seeming to freeze in her veins. “I thought—but we saw her just before we—”

“She will die for this.” Hollow, tired, like clockwork: a simple fact. “That is three times today that she betrayed him. There will not be a fourth.” A deep breath. “He will torture her, strip her mind bare, and then discard her. No Sanitorium for her.” His voice trembles. “She will be lucky if she gets an unmarked grave—”

The next moment he’s bent double, his face in his hands, his shoulders shaking. 

Jester doesn’t think. She throws her arms around Caleb, as awkward as it is from behind, and rocks him as he sobs, the way her mother once rocked her, the way she has rocked her mother so many times. 

“We’ll save her,” she whispers into Caleb’s ear, and in that moment she takes all of her dislike and mistrust and jealousy of Astrid and simply...sets it aside. For him. (Is there anything she wouldn’t set aside for him, she wonders?) “We’ll save her. And Eadwulf. I promise. He _can’t have them.”_

“No,” Caleb gasps. His hand finds her wrist, blindly, and holds it there. “No, we—you are the first priority. All of you, and your families. It was Astrid’s choice to help me, but you…” His grip tightens. “I have endangered you just by walking into your life.”

Now it’s Jester’s grip that tightens. “It was worth it, Caleb,” she whispers. “Every borrowed minute.”

Another huff of air, something caught between a laugh and a sob. He holds onto her, and he lets her hold onto him, and for a while they just sit there together, weeping, grieving, being afraid. 

Eventually, at some point—she doesn’t know when—she finds herself kneeling at his side again instead of behind him, their arms intertwined, her head resting on his shoulder. His breathing has slowed, and some of the tension, she thinks—she hopes—has left his frame. 

“I let my drink get cold,” he mumbles in apology. 

Jester gives his arm a squeeze. “Well, we’re in the Plane of Fire, you probably weren’t in the mood for hot tea anyway.”

Caleb gazes at the barren wasteland stretching out before them. Then he ducks his head, and his eyes drift shut. 

“Do you know that I love you?” he asks, barely a whisper. 

Jester’s heart must be made of porcelain, she thinks, like Veth’s old mask, because the crack suddenly shoots all the way to the edge and then there’s just...dust. 

“Yes,” she breathes. 

Neither one of them speaks for a long minute. 

“Then you know…” A sigh leaves him, the kind of sigh Jester can’t name. “You know that I will keep you and your mother safe. No matter the cost.”

Panic claws at her chest, like it has so many countless times already today. “Not if the cost is your life, Caleb—”

“I didn’t say it would be.” Is it just her, or does the corner of his mouth lift the _tiniest_ bit? “I would very much prefer for it not to be. But if that is the price I am required to pay, Jester, I will pay it.”

She sits up straighter. “I don’t want you to,” she whispers. Thoughts and feelings, new and old, are clicking into place just like the carefully-constructed gears and mechanisms of the Happy Fun Ball. “Caleb—”

“I don’t have a death wish, Jester, not anymore.” His eyes are open again, though he won’t meet her gaze. “Don’t worry about that.”

“I worry about _you.”_ Was this her heart, this pile of ash? It can’t have been, because underneath what used to be a smooth and polished shell is something beating, warm, alive. “You act like you think you can take on Trent and the Assembly and the Somnovem all by yourself, but you can’t just—”

Caleb turns and takes her face in his hands. All her words leave her, as sure as if the air’s been sucked from her lungs. 

“If you are safe…” he whispers, and he leans close, so close, until his forehead is inches from hers, his calloused fingertips rough and perfect on her cheeks, “if you are safe, then there is nothing I cannot do.” 

Her lips part, and—

“They’re back!” shouts Veth from twenty yards away, and Caleb drops his hands and turns away, and an instant later Jester hears Fjord’s voice, calling out to the group that they’re fine, everyone’s fine, all accounted for, and where is Jester?

She gets to her feet and swallows the lump in her throat. Thank goodness, she thinks dully. Thank goodness everyone is okay. Thank goodness Fjord is back—Fjord, her...friend, her crush. Fjord, who kissed her. 

A glance back over her shoulder at Caleb reveals that he’s standing up as well, dusting the dirt off his clothes. He doesn’t meet Jester’s eye as he strides forward to rejoin the others. 

She takes a step and feels something crack beneath her foot. Shit. She looks down. It’s her teacup, she realizes, broken into half a dozen shards under the hard leather sole of her boot. 

Carefully she kneels and scoops the pieces up. She can glue it back together. It’s fine. 

She blinks roughly against the scorching wind off the blasted plains and follows her family.

_fin_


End file.
